Carnaval, Part 2

Here are the second half of my pictures.  Bolivia is huge on their traditional dances, and it seemed like half the city was dressed up and dancing one of them in the parade.  These are some dancers from La Paz...

These are dancers from Cochabamba.  For some reason, despite the normally modest way people here tend to dress, all of the women in this type of dance wear tiny, tiny skirts.  It's tradition.

This is the Angel Michael, who's part of a dance showing the good angels battling Lucifer and the other bad ones....

This is a creepy bear.  They are the devil's messengers.

These women are part of a dance that recreates what used to be fights to the death between different groups in the northern area of Bolivia (and what, even today, are pretty brutal fights between angry men) up there.

These are the "fighting" men.  They are the oldest and best dancers of the group, so they get to act out the fight...and wear these amazing llama hats.  You can't see them too well in the picture, but they are big stuffed animal llamas on top of hats.  They may have been my favorite part of the parade.

Koa

Although most Bolivians are Christian, there are lots of beliefs and traditions from the indigenous religions that are still popular.  I generally don't see a lot of them in Cochabamba (I think other cities and rural areas practice those things more), but the day before Ash Wednesday, everyone does a good luck ritual/sacrafice to Puchamama (Mother Earth).  This includes my Catholic orphanage.

The first thing you need to do is get charcoal burning...

Then you add a packet of incense to get rid of bad things and bring your house good luck in the next year...

Then you walk around in a circle, pouring a mixture of alcohol and Coca Cola on the ground...

Then you throw confetti on everyone's heads (I'm not sure if this is part of the traditional ceremony or not, but I think it's common). 

Then you light strings of tiny fireworks and throw them on the ground, where they go popping off in all directions.  This is a little risky especially if, like my director's husband, you don't look that carefully at were you throw them and there are 50 girls standing around close by.  (The picture is of a safer round of fireworks, after the girls had moved farther away.)  People light these fireworks in all houses in Cochabamba that day, making the whole city sound a bit like a war zone.  But I guess it's important for bringing luck to your family.

Carnaval, Part 1

I know this is super late, but here, just in time for Easter, is how Cochabambinos celebrate Carnaval (aka Mardi Gras, for those of you in Pensacola).

Water

Really, the most important part of Carnaval celebrations in Cochabamba is getting people as wet as possible.  For weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday, kids sit on street corners and squirt water guns at people walking by.  Teenagers drive through the streets, armed with water balloons, throwing them at pedistrians.  It starts out slowly.  Towards the end of January, I was only getting hit once a week.  But in Carnaval weekend, you can't escape it.  Kids are armed and ready on every block.  Every corner store and street stall starts selling cans of foam, another important squirting-people tool.

Water fights are also big.  We had two at Madre de Dios.  The girls and I rounded up all the weapons we could find (balloons, plastic bottles, buckets), filled them in the rain water tank, and ran around the outdoor court getting each other as soaked as possible.  On Tuesday, we loaded up buckets with water balloons and roamed the streets, looking for other kids to do battle with, until we arrived at a boys home that's part of our organization.  Unfortunately, the boys had misbehaved earlier that day and weren't allowed to go out, but they still very impressively managed to throw a dozen water balloons over their gate and all the way down the block to get us.

And it's not just kids who get in on the action.  I went to the 27th birthday party of a friend's friend the Sunday of Carnaval, and the first thing he did when we arrived was push us into a pool.  A few days earlier, I'd gone to a barbeque full of college graduates where, even though the weather was about 65 degrees and cloudy, all of the guys insisted on filling up an inflatable kiddy pool and daring each other to get in.

Fun Scale: 4/10.  The water fights with the girls were awesome, but getting hit in the butt with water balloons while walking to work is not.  Especially because Februrary is awfully rainy and chilly to begin with.

Parades

Bolivians love their Carnaval parades.  The biggest one is in the city of Oruro, and they are super proud of it.  Every Bolivian you ask will tell you that Oruro has the second biggest Carnaval celebration in South America (after only Rio) and that even Jude Law came this year.  That parade lasts for almost two days, with only one short break (from about 3 AM to 7 AM).  Oruro is so popular, in fact, that Cochabamba moved its Carnaval parade to the following weekend so as not to compete.  (Technically, Lent has started and Carnaval should be over by then, but, since all of the dance troups from Cochabamba go to Oruro on the right day, they wouldn't be able to have any parade otherwise.)

 

What Cochabamba does have on Carnaval weekend is a kids' parade, which the girls and everyone who works at Madre de Dios (including me) got to march in this year.  The morning was a little chaotic, as all of the girls and adults scrambled to find costumes out of the mountain of outfit pieces someone had lent us, and then as we got 65 people downtown using just one van.  The last group of girls arrived well after the parade had started, just in time for us to organize ourselves and hop into our position as #134 in line.  

We sorted ourselves into three groups: witches, Chakarera dancers (the ones with the big swirly Spanish skirts), and little girls (who, because they didn't fit into the other costumes, were wearing whatever we could find for them).  Sure, other groups had floats or music or organized dances, but we made up for our rag-tag-ness with lots of spirit.  The dancers swirled their skirts and danced to the songs the group in front of us was playing.  The witches ran around trying to scare the kids in the audience who were (of course) squirting us with water guns and cans of foam. 

The next week, I went to the adult Carnaval parade in Cochabamba, and it was great.  The first part of the parade is made up of just soldiers.  All young men in Bolivia have to do a year of military service (on the weekends or after school), and each unit comes up with their own theme to march in the parade.  There were the invisible men, wearing shirts over their heads, with glasses and hats suspended by wires above them.  Another group made a huge fish float entirely out of recycled bags of juice.  Lots of them were popular characters from TV or movies: One group had a lone Batman followed by 100 Jokers...another group made a huge Gru float and danced on it dressed as Minions...a few groups went as the Avengers (making a suprising amount of Captain Americas for an army that doesn't like the US all that much)...there was also a group of just Olafs from Frozen.  

After the soliders came hundreds of dancing groups.  The post was too big to upload all at once, so I'll publish the rest of the pictures soon!

The Jungle Post

This weekend, my roommate Ina and I took a trip to Villa Tunari, a small town in the Chapare region of the Bolivian rainforest.  The bus trip was only 4 hours long, but it felt like we traveled to a different world.  Even though Cochabamba is close to the equator, it's so high up in the mountains that the air is dry and it's usually pretty cool.  Villa Tunari, though, is almost at sea level, which allows jungle plants, animals, heat, and mosquitos to flourish there.

Like this, but with a National Geographic camera, instead
of my iPod through a bus window

The drive there was beautiful - we passed gorgeous mountains that were completely covered with deep green forests, waterfalls cascading down between rocks and vines, and clusters of little houses on stilts.  In middle school, one of my art assignments was to paint a landscape from National Geographic.  I chose a picture of two lush, tree-covered mountains with clouds rolling down their tops.  I can't remember where that picture was taken, but on the path to Villa Tunari, we passed what I swear was an identical landscape.

Just a few yards away from our room...

Ina and I stayed in "The Bridge Jungle Hotel," which consisted of a few little buildings (some guest cabins, a reception area, a hammock room) and a tiny pool surrounded by acres of nature: jungle, a river with swimming holes, a zipline path, and more jungle.  It was about a mile away from the only big-ish road in the town, so it was peaceful and quiet.  Well, maybe peaceful and quiet isn't the right description - it was actually quite noisy with the sounds of the nature surrounding it.  It was like someone was playing a "rainforest relaxation" meditation CD at high volume - all day and night, we could hear birds, monkeys, giant grasshoppers, and weird animals we didn't recognize at all.  One made a noise almost exactly like a rock dropping into a puddle of water.  Another sounded a little like a chainsaw.

The highlight of our trip was Parque Machi - a wildlife refugee that helps animals like monkeys, bears, turtles, and pumas that have been hurt, mistreated, or kept as pets get healthy and (hopefully) become re-incorporated into the wild.  The tamer animals (ie the monkeys) are left free to roam around a large section of the park, and visitors can walk through a trail in the middle of it.  

At first, Ina and I were a little disappointed.  For most of the 45 minute (all uphill) hike between the trees and vines in the muggy jungle heat, we only saw a few monkeys - and they were all so far away we could barely make them out through the trees.  Then we reached the top of the path: a little gazebo outlooking the river and town below.  It was full of monkeys hamming it up for a small audience of park visitors.  Smaller teenage monkeys swung from vines and held people's hands.  A tiny baby monkey took turns gazing curiously at the people taking pictures of it and hiding behind its mom.  Super laid-back older monkeys lay sleepily on the benches, opening their eyes - but not seeming to mind - when people would pet them or take pictures with them.  

He also looked a lot like Gollum

It was so cool.  I'd never seen monkeys that close before - they're awesome!  Watching them swing from vine to vine up close was amazing.  We got to see how they gripped with their tails, and how they helped each other reach even greater heights by pulling each other up.  The monkeys were also a lot fluffier than I'd imagined.  It wasn't quite like petting a cat, but their fur was much softer than I would have guessed.  At the same time, they looked so much more like humans than I'd thought.  The baby one had a face just like a hairy little old man.  

After we'd seen our fill of monkeys (and gotten more than enough mosquito bites), we headed back to explore the area around our hotel.  We hiked one of the little trails down to the river.  There, in one of the little swimming holes, we went for a swim, surrounded by a colorful cliff on one side and the dense forest on the other.  Afterrwards, we tried to sunbathe and read on the sandy shore for awhile, but the excessive amounts of ants foiled that plan.  Instead, we spent the rest of the afternoon listening to the jungle noises and swinging on hammocks above the hotel's restaurant.

Now does anyone want to come visit me?

The experience was amazing.  Chapare is on the very edge of the rainforest, making it the perfect beginner's trip into the jungle - one where there is still electricity and the bugs aren't that bad.  I mean, they were terrible, but not worse than camping by a lake during a Minnesota summer, and no where close to as bad as a certain ACE graduation retreat in Wisconsin last year...Still, Chapare is legitimately the jungle, and it was awesome to see it - filled with all kinds of strange and beautiful birds, amazing animals I'll probably never see again outside of a zoo, beautifully colored flowers and trees, and a sense of adventure and discovery.

Weird Things About Bolivia

Now that the holidays are over, I figured it was time for a post on everyday life here in Bolivia - and what better topic than some of Bolivia's quirks?   Of course, every country in the world has things that seem strange to foreigners, and Bolivians coming to the US would find plenty of things they'd think were odd...However, something about working at a chaotic orphanage in an especially un-globalized city has made me think that this may be a somewhat more odd place than usual.

A few months ago, for example, feeling a little overwhelmed by the drama and weird things that kept happening that week, I walked into work thinking, "Please, Bolivia, can we just have one normal day?"  Five minutes later, Bolivia answered my question by sending this guest speaker to the orphanage:

It was a grungy man dressed as a giant, mangy animal.  He started off by telling the girls he was a white messenger bear, sent to tell humans about the importance of ecological conservation.  The girls look on politely; my roommate and I tried to decide if he looked more like a gorilla, a bear, or a giant chicken.  Then, the bear began to tell us about he days at an animal rescue center - including a time when he rescued a bunch of animals from poachers by carrying them above his head through a river, and a time when he snuck a 15-foot boa constrictor into a hotel for a few nights and let it sleep in his bed with him.  I wasn't sure at first if this was the bear or the man talking, but it soon became all too apparent that the illegal and terrifying things he had done had, in fact, been real - and that he was encouraging the girls to take similar actions.

Towards the end of his talk, the man told us he used to sleep surrounded by monkeys at the center: the big ones by his feet, the middle ones on his stomach, and the little ones by his head.  Once day, he  dreamt he was eating the most delicious jam...He wasn't sure what fruit it was, but it was so tasty...Then he woke up...and realized one of the monkeys had pooped in his mouth.  

Apparently deciding nothing could top that story, he summoned all the girls into a conga line and led them outside.  There, he taught them a totally safe and age-appropriate game: One of the girls would put on the huge bear head (so she could barely see) and run around, while another would run around, pretending to shoot her with a huge stick/imaginary machine gun.

The moral of the story is: There are no normal days in Bolivia.  Here are just a few of the smaller, day-to-day things that keep it interesting:

1. Toilet Paper

Toilet paper is not that expensive here, but it might be Bolivia's most closely guarded commodity.  Going to a bathroom and being able to use as much t.p. as you want is almost unheard of.  Nicer restaurants will sometimes stock it, but there's only about a 50/50 chance it will be there at any given time; normal restaurants almost certainly won't have any.  Public restrooms, where you pay about 25 cents to use the grossest baños in the history of the world, will give you a few nicely folded up pieces before you enter.  The poor girls I work with have to ask for toilet paper every time they go to the bathroom, both at home and at school.  The workers keep the rolls in the office instead of the bathroom because they are worried the girls will use too much (there are frequent t.p. shortages at the home) or will throw it on the floor instead of the trashcan (where all Bolivian toilet paper is supposed to go - the sewage systems aren't built to handle it).  

As a result, most women carry toilet paper in their purses with them, most men have a roll in their car, and I spend way more time than I ever thought possible handing out, thinking about, and trying to find toilet paper.

I have no pictures of the mermaids, but here
is one of the girls who believes in them wearing
her underwear over her pants and asking me
to take a pictures of her weirdness. 

2. Belief in Mermaids

Bolivians have a lot of superstitions, but I wouldn't say those are particularly weird.  I mean, I throw a pinch of salt over my shoulder when I spill it.  I certainly can't judge Bolivians for thinking that spinning around in a circle while holding an eggshell will cure you or that sitting at the corner of a table means you won't get married.

For some reason, though, it does seem strange to me that a good number of people believe that mermaids live in Lake Titicaca.  The girls I work with are shocked and appalled that I don't believe it.  I wouldn't say it's a universal belief, but it's not just the girls - there are plenty of adults here who believe in mermaids, as well.

3. Conceptions of the U.S.

It didn't really surprise me that not many people here know much about the U.S. - I mean, how many Americans know much about Bolivia?  What did surprise me, though, was that no one here even recognizes my accent as being American.  After four months of working at the orphanage, I realized that at least half the staff thought I was German.  Yesterday, a woman I'd just met asked, "So, are you Spanish or Dutch?"  Multiple people have been surprised to find out I'm from the U.S., have told me I don't look like it, and have guessed that my parents are South American.  (I think because I'm not blonde.)

It's kind of nice to not be stereotyped, and I'm sure Bolivians going to the U.S. would have similar experiences, but I get asked some pretty strange questions as a result.  Honestly, the most common one I've been asked about the U.S. is if I've been to Springfield to see where the Simpsons are from.  Everyone is impressed by how cold Minnesota is.  The girls have asked how close I live to Paris.  A college student tried interrogating me about the naval stations the U.S. is planting in the oceans surrounding Asia to cause tsunamis to wipe out China as an economic power (I said I didn't believe it, and he seemed to pity me for believing what my government wanted me to believe).

4. Giant Squeegies

Instead of using mops to clean their floors, Bolivians use giant squeegies.  Every floor I've seen has been tile, wood, or concrete.  Every time I've seen anyone clean them, it has been by dumping soapy water all over and then using a giant squeegie to push it outside or down a special floor drain.

5. My Name

I haven't met a single Bolivian who calls me "Anna."  Not because it's a hard or unusual name - there are plenty of Ana's here - but because of Bolivian syntax.  Everywhere that people speak Spanish, -ito and -ita are used at the end of words to make things smaller or cuter.  A gato is a cat; a gatito is a kitten.  Bolivians, though, may use the ending more than all other Hispanic people combined.  Instead of a glass of agua, they ask for an aguita.  All of their mamas are mamitas.  Instead of asking for favors, they ask for favorcitos.  They're never going to be 5 minutos late, just 5 minutitos.  

Bonus weird thing: an egg wishing you a merry Christmas

They don't do it with all names, and I'm not even sure if they do it with all Ana's, but no matter who I meet, they always call me "Anita."  I had to meet with Amanecer's lawyer in a very professional setting to do some translating and introduced myself as Anna.  He responded, "Nice to meet you, Anita."  My first day volunteering with three-year-olds, the director presented me as "Anna," and all the toddlers immediately responded "¡Hola, Anita!"  Later that day, when one of the older kids asked my name, I said "Anna" and the three-year-old next to me interrupted to say "Anita.  Her name is Anita."  I guess, until June, it is.

Here is a juice bag for snack

6. Drinks in Bags

Most drinks - from milk to water to juice - are sold in bags, especially for individual servings.  You can get bottles of water or pop, and I've seen a few cartons of juice, but by far the most common way to get liquids is in little plastic bags that you bite open on one side and squeeze into your mouth.  It saves money, I think.

7. Clowns

Clowns are really popular here.  They are everywhere - juggling in front of cars stopped at red lights for money, dancing outside of stores that are having big sales, visiting the orphanage for Christmas.  I even saw a sign advertising clowns for all occassions: birthday parties, baptisms, weddings.  I have no idea how popular wedding clowns are, but the fact that they exist shows how much Bolivians love those guys.  Most of them seem a little weird and slight scary to me, but I do have to give due credit to this guy who came to the orphanage in December and kept the girls laughing and playing games for almost two hours - all while being genuinely nice and funny, and not the least bit creepy.

If you're ever in Bolivia and in need of a wedding
clown, call this guy up.

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Ina and I in our foam "2015" flapper hats

Happy New Year from Cochabamba!


In many ways, the celebrations were very similar to the ones in the US - parties, midnight toasts, "2015" hats/glasses, things like that - but of course, everything had a Bolivian twist. Here's a little about what New Year's Eve was like...

The Food

With the rice replaced with the usual amounts of meat, I
think this would be Dad's dream food.

New Year's Eve dinner was definitely the best one of the year at the orphanage (not a high bar, but, still).  We had a dish called pique macho, which is usually French fries topped with heaps of different kinds of meat and a few tomatoes and hot pepper slices.  At Madre de Dios, we had the budget version - only one kind of meat, supplemented by a side of rice - but it was still good.  We even got pepper slices and ketchup, making it the most flavorful dish we've had there.  

Fricase

As I've mentioned before, Bolivians love to eat, and New Year's is no exception.  I went to a party with some of my friends and was surprised that - right after the clock struck midnight and everyone toasted and hugged each other - everyone sat down for a meal.  Apparently, there is no better way to start off the new year than by eating, especially eating pork.  We had fricase, a soup made up of a not-very-spicy chili broth, big pieces of pork, and huge corn kernals.  

Dancing

Posing safely from the girls' side of the room

There was a lot of dancing on New Year's.  The girls' home that I work in threw a party, where they invited the boys from another home within the Amanecer organization.  We cleared the cafeteria of tables, set up chairs along the walls, and turned on music and flashing lights.  It was a lot like middle school dances in the US: girls sitting on one side, boys on the other, lots of kids trying to get their friends to ask the friends of their crush to dance with them, very little actually dancing with people of the opposite gender.  The kids did dance with their friends a good amount, though, and some of them had pretty good moves!  The party that my friends and I went to later also had a lot of dancing to different kinds of music: cumbia, salsa, bachata, merengue, pop music.  I loved the variety of music here, and having the chance to dance to things like salsa and bachata!  

Good Luck Traditions

Apparently, as soon as all of the panettone vendors get rid of their stock of cake from Christmas, they switch to selling good luck charms.  All over Cochabamba, the streets were lined with people selling things to bring prosperity to the new year.  

Like this, but sold out of wheelbarrows.  Picture from http://listas.
eleconomista. es/system/items/000/046/910/
medium/ropa_interior_para_fin_de_ano.jpg?1419971549

It is widely known here that you need to wear new yellow underwear on New Year's if you want money and new red underwear if you want love, so there were carts and carts of ladies selling nothing but red and yellow panties.  There were also people selling stacks of fake money that apparently you can burn to summon real money in your life in the year to come, as well as little replicas of bigger things people might want: houses, visas, cars, llamas.  

When I took some of the girls to the market a few days before New Year's Eve, they insisted on buying little stones with different colors, meant to bring prosperity in different areas of your life: work, family, love, money, school, health, and prosperity (in general, I suppose, although I was a little confused about it).  Even though I said I didn't believe in it, they wouldn't let us leave until I bought a few, too, so now I have a tiny packet of pebbles I have to carry around in my purse until 2016, lest everything start to go terribly in those areas.  I'll let you know if it ends up being an exceptionally lucky year.

And, readers, I hope you all have wonderful and luck-filled years, even if you didn't wear the right underwear or buy your mini llamas in time!